FTW94LA117 · Piper PA-24-260
Piper PA-24-260 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Brownsville South Padre Island International Airport (BRO) to Albuquerque International Sunport (ABQ)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW94LA117
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-24-260
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-24
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N8961P
- Operator
- Gilcrist, Robert P. · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Brownsville South Padre Island International Airport (BRO), Brownsville, TXTo Albuquerque International Sunport (ABQ), Albuquerque, NM
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- En route · cruise
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Loss of control in flight
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Weather condition › Turbulence, clear air
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
FLIGHT WAS EN ROUTE AT 10,000 FEET MSL WITH SCATTERED CLOUDS WHEN THE PILOT ENCOUNTERED 'SEVERE DOWNDRAFTS' AND THE AIRPLANE ENTERED AN UNCONTROLLED ALTITUDE DEVIATION AND DESCENT. THE PILOT INADVERTENTLY EXCEED THE NEVER EXCEED SPEED. AIRPLANE CONTROL WAS RECOVERED AT 4,400 FEET MSL. THE PILOT REPORTED THE AIR WAS 'RELATIVELY SMOOTH WITH SCATTERED CLOUDS AND NO OBVIOUS WARNING SIGNS.' HORIZONTAL STABILIZERS WERE BENT DOWNWARD.
Probable cause
THE LOSS OF CONTROL DUE TO CLEAR AIR TURBULENCE.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW94LA117
- Event ID
- 20001206X01096
- Case number
- FTW94LA117
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 2215c595f8edf18414f35273b7d530ac63a4f54810e34955a3da48be9185ccb0; retrieved 2026-09-23T01:12:56.082Z.